Recent medical research indicates that human airway acidity and ammonia levels may be indicative of several events including the onset of asthmatic symptoms. Furthermore, this research indicates that the acidity measurements taken from a condensed sample of exhaled breath can be correlated to the actual conditions inside the airway.
Many known devices for collecting condensate from a user's breath rely on gravity to form a condensate pool from which a sample for testing may be drawn. These types of devices require that condensate droplets become large enough to overcome water's naturally tendency to stick to the walls of a collecting tube. Then, when the amount of condensate eventually becomes large enough, a risk of loss of collected condensate sample through seepage out of the collection area may arise due to ineffective sealing of the collection area. Even when an adequate condensate sample had been collected, a risk of contamination occurred due to the necessity to transfer the sample from a collecting tube into test tubes or test devices. Moreover, where the collecting tube is not cooled in some way, condensate formation takes an inordinate amount of time. In some cases, the collecting tube is inserted into an ice bucket or may even be separately cooled by refrigeration systems in order to increase the amount and speed of condensate formation. In other cases, use of a Teflon® collecting tube has been tried to make the tube walls more slippery to enhance the speed and amount of condensate collected. All of these arrangements tend to be either expensive, complicated, ineffective, bulky, inefficient or time-consuming to use. In addition, other condensate collecting and testing devices generally do not provide the ability in a single device both to quickly and efficiently collect condensate while also delivering test substances such as gases or liquids into the condensate without contamination. Moreover, such devices are not typically portable and do not lend themselves easily to use by patients in their own homes. Another disadvantage of devices of the prior art is that they usually do not enable patients to collect condensate samples, prepare those collected samples for testing and then also perform certain tests themselves on the samples.
What is needed is a device and method for condensate collection which solves the problems and shortcoming already described and, in addition, collects a greater amount of condensate from a given amount of exhaled breath in a shorter time than previously possible while also advancing the art by providing a multi-functional valve for use in such a condensate collection device that simultaneously assists in solving several of those problems.